The figure quoted for borrowers that are late with at least one payment at dutch Boober.nl is 3.8 percent. This strikes me as quite high, considering operations of started only February this year. A (user composed and maybe not complete) list of the loans that are currently late at Boober, can be found here.
Zopa prepares launch in Italy
Actually Zopa.it is not run by the British Zopa Ltd. but by the franchise “P2P s.r.l” with offices in Milano. The company has licensed the use of the brand and the technology for Italy. Zopa.it will allow Italians to borrow up to 40000 Euro (roughly $55000), which is a high amount, compared to p2p services in other countries.
The company was created by Nova partners, Milan, together with New College Capital Ltd.
It is possible to pre-register on Zopa.it to be notified at launch time.
Sources(1, 2, 3, and own research)
Correction and Update: I must excuse myself to have confused the CEO of Zopa Italy with another Italian banker with identical name. As Carlo of Zopa Italy pointed out in a comment to this post: “Zopa Italy’s Ceo is Maurizio Pietro Sella, not Maurizio Sella. Maurizio Pietro started is working career with Banco di Santo Spirito (Capitalia Group), then joined in 1990 Citibank, where he had several assignements (mainly in London and Switzerland) and in 2002 the Julius Baer Group in Geneva. Before Zopa Maurizio Pietro was CEO of Julius Baer Creval Private Banking Spa, a joint venture between the Julius Baer Group and Gruppo Credito Valtellinese.”
According to unverified sources the venture raised 2.8 million Euro funding from its shareholders. It is speculated that Zopa Italy will take higher fees (maybe 1 percent from lender and 1 percent from borrower) than Zopa in England. This seems possible since consumer banking costs in Italy are generally higher.
KCBS Video on Prosper
Here is a short KCBS video on Prosper.com. Nothing really new. Basic intro
Note: By clicking on the “Mash” button you can easily integrate this video into your blog or website. Nice.
Even better is the automatic video feed on new prosper stories you can get here for your site. Test it now.
Download Zopa default rate figures
British Zopa.com just published a spreadsheet with Zopa default rate figures. The weighted average of overall defaults is a tiny 0.1% ! Even more interesting all defaulted cases happened in 2005 or the first half of 2006.
Another interesting read is this case study on Zopa (published late 2006).
Update on Lendingclub launch
Following up on my earlier post regarding the LendingClub launch read Colin Henderson's view on this. Furthermore in this blog it says (without giving sources):
For the moment, the site is only accessible through Facebook, but will eventually be available to the public.
Ireloans to offer p2p lending in Ireland
Ireloans.com has announced that it will offer p2p lending in Ireland. (Source: barcampBank)
Other services still in prelaunch phase include CommunityLend.com in Canada and One2Money.de in Germany (Source: Springwise.com)